Detective: Man cut up wife, burned body parts

June 10, 2011

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Richard Forsberg BRUCE CHAMBERS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A landscape maintenance worker moves to the next-door property after raking leaves from the home of 61-year old Richard Forsberg who was arrested Aug. 30, 2010, in Palm Springs in connection with his wife, Marcia Ann Forsberg's disappearance in Rancho Santa Margarita. KEN STEINHARDT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department said during an Aug. 31, 2010, news conference that his department believed that Richard Forsberg killed his wife inside their home, then rented a car to dispose of the body. BRUCE CHAMBERS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Marcia Ann Forsberg COURTESY OF THE ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT

SANTA ANA – Gruesome details of how a Rancho Santa Margarita man bludgeoned, dismembered and then disposed of his wife's body parts by burning them at a campsite emerged through testimony Friday of a sheriff's investigator.

Forsberg was arrested Aug. 30, 2010, after two interviews with investigators, including one at a hospital in Palm Springs where he was being treated after trying to commit suicide, authorities said.

Investigators with the Orange County Sheriff's Department said Forsberg kept his wife's body at the house for several days before renting an RV and taking it to Lake Piru in Ventura County.

Here's what investigator Thompson testified Friday about how Forsberg told detectives he carried out the crime:

Forsberg began the clean up of the crime scene after bludgeoning his wife Marcia Ann Forsberg in the head with a statue at 1 a.m. on the night of the incident. On his way home from work that afternoon, he stopped by a hardware store to purchase hacksaw blades and garbage bags.

Forsberg then cut his wife's body into several pieces, leaving the torso intact. He wrapped the body parts in the trash bags, placing some of them in a plastic tub with ice and the rest in a garage refrigerator freezer.

The next day, Forsberg bought an ice chest at the hardware store and stored all of his wife's body parts in it. Then Forsberg told detectives he contemplated a "disposal mechanism," Thompson testified in court.

He rented an RV on Feb. 19 and bought another ice chest and transferred the dismembered body parts into the new chest and decided to go to Lake Piru.

The next night, Forsberg put one of the parts in the fire to see the effect and moved to a more secluded spot on Feb. 21 to burn all of his wife's body pieces except the torso.

He returned home with the torso and during the week dismembered it into several pieces, returning again to Lake Piru the next weekend to burn them. Detectives verified through records that Forsberg was at the campground on both weekends.

"He was very meticulous; he was very methodical," Thomspon said after Friday's hearing at which Deputy District Attorney Baytieh Ebrahim put the detective on the stand.

Forsberg donated both chest freezers to thrift stores and detectives located one of them.

Following an initial police interview on Aug. 24, 2010, in which he told investigators that his wife was missing, had mental problems and had taken off, Forsberg got scared and tried to commit suicide by taking sleeping pills and muscle relaxants, Thompson testified.

Forsberg is being held in Men's Central Jail without bail. Another hearing in the case is scheduled for June 21. If convicted for his wife's murder, Forsberg could face a sentence of life in state prison without the possibility of parole.

At the time of this arrest, Marcia Ann Forsberg had not been seen by friends or neighbors since February. When they asked Forsberg for her whereabouts, he would tell them she was with friends, that they had separated or that she was staying in Arizona.

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